Hannah Duston in Haverhill, Massachusetts

It's not that often you come across a statue of a woman, and far less often that the woman is wielding a weapon. But here we have Hannah Duston with an axe. The words and images around the statue tell the story.

Duston looks more fiercesome close up.

The first panel was impossible to read in full at the time because of the foliage in front of it, although it tells of Hannah's capture in Haverhill by the Indians in 1697.

'HER HUSBANDS'S DEFENCE

OF THE CHILDREN

AGAINST THE PURSUING

SAVAGES.'

'HER SLAYING OF HER

CAPTORS AT CONTOOCOOK

ISLAND MAR. 30, 1697,

AND ESCAPE.'

'HER RETURN.'

Although not at all relevant to a post on Hannah Duston, it would perhaps be a mistake to exclude this about Haverhill: as Wikipedia says, '[Haverhill] was for many decades home to a significant shoe-making industry, by the end of 1913 Haverhill boasted one tenth of the shoes produced in America and because of this the town was known for a time as the "Queen Slipper City." There's a big one to illustrate this: